Will newcomer Greater Bay Airline be Hong Kong’s new operator?

It is quite rare nowdays with new airlines starting up, but The Civil Aviation Authorities of Hong Kong are processing the new airline’s application for an air operator certificate in Hong Kong.

The owner of the airline is Bill Wong Chu-bau, a Hong Kong resident who is also the owner of Senzhen-based airline Donghai.

Hong Kong has traditionally been a hard market to get into with no slot times available for new operator, but with most operators not flying that much or even at all any more, it is a good time to try to enter a new market. The timing might seem strange, but I would assume any plans to start actually flying would be at least 1-2 years from now, hopefully the world will be back to normal again by then. In that case it might just be the right time to start a new airline now – there would also be a lot of equipment and staff on the market now that can be secured at a lower than normal price.

I expect Greater Bay Airlines to be operating narrow-bodied aircraft (Boeing 737s), mostly between Hong Kong and Mainland China, but possibly also on a few of the more popular international routes (Hong Kong to Taipei for instance), which would be a similar business model of what Donghai has today.

It will be very interesting to see if this airline will actually start up, and when they will start operations as well.